For small molten salt reactors, a common thread is delivery of the reactor vessel preferably as a container that can fit on a conventional truck mostly. However, of those, most end up tipping the container/vessel upright for installation.

Is this a natural progression from utilizing conventional dump tank arrangements, which need some degree of vertical clearance to implement?

What kind of solutions are there for an MSR that is vertically constrained, say a desire to install the reactor container as is without flipping up? I guess the dimensional restriction is vertically and horizontally restrained, but depth is not the limit. How would that influence reactor design?

The obvious problem is dump tank arrangement, but the reactor shape itself goes weird as well. Coolant salt heat exchanger within the reactor could be setup long instead of tall, but the thermal circulation would be more difficult because of a harsher vertical gradient (with respect to natural circulation).

Are there any interesting shaping/design tricks to deal with a vertical constraint?

Asteroza wrote:For small molten salt reactors, a common thread is delivery of the reactor vessel preferably as a container that can fit on a conventional truck mostly. However, of those, most end up tipping the container/vessel upright for installation.

Is this a natural progression from utilizing conventional dump tank arrangements, which need some degree of vertical clearance to implement?

What kind of solutions are there for an MSR that is vertically constrained, say a desire to install the reactor container as is without flipping up? I guess the dimensional restriction is vertically and horizontally restrained, but depth is not the limit. How would that influence reactor design?

The obvious problem is dump tank arrangement, but the reactor shape itself goes weird as well. Coolant salt heat exchanger within the reactor could be setup long instead of tall, but the thermal circulation would be more difficult because of a harsher vertical gradient (with respect to natural circulation).

Are there any interesting shaping/design tricks to deal with a vertical constraint?

IMSR (Terrestrial) depicts delivery as the vessel on some custom made fixture that supports it on the semi trailer. Part of the reactor site is the cranes and equipment to handle all load/unloading of modules shipped from the factory. IMSRs will be initially rated for 7 year service life, so every 7 years a new reactor core needs to come in.

But that could be notional. Delivery engineering sounds like the very last issue a reactor designer needs to finalize.

Should not be much of a problem. All proposed reactor buildings that I have seen include a gantry crane as part of the building. This crane is high enough height to lift the reactor when it is vertical. Just hook the top of the reactor and lift. This is a common operation when delivering chemical reactors and distillation towers.